re: #422 lawhawk

I’ve been on commuter trains and excursion trains that have collided with cars. The train wins EVERY damned time.

The car is usually completely wrecked, and most of the time the train doesn’t derail. When it does, then things can go bad very quickly (a Metro North collision a few years ago resulted in significant loss of life as an electrified 3d rail skewered a train and started a fire).

Most of the time, the culprit of the collision is a vehicle ignoring a crossing signal or somehow got stuck on the tracks and the train didn’t have time to stop, but there are some incidents where the signal malfunctioned, or there are no crossing gates.

I read once that in the late 19th Century, an average of 6000 people died every year, related to the railroads. Either killed in train crashes, or killed by trains or killed in other ways.

6000. Every year.